Mintah Akandoh, the Health Minister, has revealed that Ghana would need about GHS6 billion to recruit all 74,000 unemployed health professionals currently at home.
The health minister highlighted that his ministry is working to clear backlog by collaborating with the Finance Ministry.
Speaking in an interview on The Point of View on Channel One TV on Wednesday, October 15, the Minister explained, “We will need not less than GHS6 billion to be able to absorb all the 74,000 health professionals at home at the moment”.
Mintah Akandoh further clarified that the brouhaha surrounding the 13,000 newly recruited nurses and midwives’ clearance.
The health minister once again blamed the former Akufo-Addo administration for issuing clearance without financial backing.
He stated, “The reality is that in 2024, the government started to recruit nurses and midwives. So the summary is that they recruited about 13,500 nurses and midwives and issued clearance”.
“Once you issue clearance, you must make financial provision. Clearance is not just a paper… you issue clearance when indeed you can pay when you recruit the people.”
“The clearance expired on 31st December 2024. What it means is that before the expiration… you must necessarily have all these 13,500 people on the payroll. As at the end of 31st December 2024, not a single one of the 13,500 people were on the payroll,” he added.
The health minister further revealed that newly recruited nurses started work around August 2024, but were not budgeted for.
Mintah Akandoh explained, “When we came, there were two options available because there was no allocation for these nurses and midwives. One — let them go home and look for the funding and extend the clearance, and then they come and work. Two — you can allow them to work while you look at how you will pay them, because that was not captured as part of our budget”.
“I have been collaborating with the Minister responsible for Finance, and out of the 13,500, we managed to put about 7,000 of them on the payroll. So half of them were being paid,” he said.
According to the Minister, his ministry is working to gradually absorb the workers into the payroll in collaboration with the Finance Ministry.
“The reality is that we captured about 10,000 of them on the payroll, but only 7,000 on the payroll were being paid. Some of them have received payments from March thereabout. We were onboarding them gradually.”
“It got to a time that we realised that there were a lot of things — more than even the 13,500 nurses they had recruited. There were arrears of allowances, there were conditions of services that had been signed, and they were not implemented… So it was like the budget was becoming much bigger. So we realised that if we don’t go back to Cabinet, it will throw the budget off,” the Minister added.